The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
The modern prevalence of travel booking websites has created a large amount of information that is available to consumers. In the context of travel items, such as hotel rooms, airplane flights, and vacation packages, service providers who own or operate travel websites may negotiate directly with the travel service provider to create an offering for the public. For example, one company may negotiate a price of $100 a night for a room while a second company may negotiate a price of $120 a night for the same room. The travel websites may display the negotiated prices, payment options, and other information about the listings on their individual websites.
The large amount of information available to customers may be overwhelming. With multiple websites available, each of which displaying booking information for multiple listings or inventory items, it is difficult for an end user to compare listings. The difficulty for the end user to reasonably compare listings negotiated by various travel websites has led to the creation of websites that consolidate listings from multiple data sources. The consolidated websites may receive information from each data source regarding availability of listings, number of listings, and rates for each listing. The consolidated websites may then display the various listings on a single site, allowing a user to compare information received from multiple data sources.
One issue with displaying comparative information received from multiple data sources is the difficulty in determining whether the data sources are describing the same or different listings. As an example, a hotel booking website may receive hotel data from multiple sources. Each data source may use different data structures to describe a hotel room. While one may include fields for “amenities,” “beds,” and “size,” another listing may include all of the information in a “description” section. Additionally, there is no general uniformity between data sources, such as unique identifiers that can be used to match room listings. Each website may have its own unique identifier for identifying a listing, but the identifiers will likely not match across data sources.
An additional issue with displaying comparative information is ensuring high quality data is displayed to a consumer. Some data sources may display higher quality data than others. For example, a first hotel booking website may display a listing that contains photographs of the hotel, photographs of the room, all amenities provided by the hotel, all amenities provided for the single room, and detailed descriptions of the room. A second data source may describe the same room with only basic information, such as availability, rate, and number of beds. The difference in descriptions may stem from choices made by the data sources or from the information made available to each data source. For example, a hotel room may release photographs of the rooms to one data source, but not to a second data source.
Another issue with displaying comparative information is that information displayed by some websites may be cryptic or difficult to understand. For example, a data source may describe a property with the phrase “36 ft balcony with kngbd” to identify a room with a king-size bed. Consumers may be confused by various types of description, especially when the descriptions describe the same property but use different language to do so.
From the perspective of a consumer, it becomes difficult to make an informed decision even when all of the information is available on the same website. To be able to compare listings, the consumer would first need to figure out if the listings are discussing the same inventory item, or hotel room. The difficulty for the consumer is compounded by the fact that each data source describes the property using different terms and provides different levels of information.
Therefore, there is a need for a system that identifies listings that describe the same listings or inventory items and provides consumers with high quality consolidated information for each listing or inventory item based on data received from each data source.